Morris in California.

In 1965, while Sanford and Helen Berger were studying architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design in Cambridge, Massachusetts, they stumbled upon a poorly printed facsimile of what is known as the Kelmscott Chaucer, originally issued by William Morris's Kelmscott Press in the late nineteenth century. They became curious about Morris's books and soon became avid collectors. They acquired astonishingly beautiful books designed and printed by the press, which Morris founded relatively late in his life in 1891, and they soon became interested in other aspects of Morris's multifaceted career.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The Bergers became well known in Morris circles, and in 1968 they were offered part of the archives of Morris and Company and its successor firms. Included in this group were more than one thousand designs, cartoons for stained glass, hundreds of designs for wallpaper, more than one hundred figure studies drawn by Morris, printed and woven textiles, carpets, tapestries, and embroideries, photographs, and important business records. Most of the pattern designs in this trove were drawn and colored by Morris's successor, John Henry Dearle, whose descendants were in possession of the archival material.

In addition to this important collection, the Bergers owned an enormous stained-glass window; a Hammersmith carpet; figure cartoons by Edward Coley Burne-Jones; samples of wallpapers and textiles; letters from Morris to his associates, friends, and business partners; and a library of more than two thousand books printed by and written about Morris. In 1999 the Bergers' holdings were acquired by the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California, through the generosity of thirty-eight donors. At the time of the acquisition the library stated that some works from the collection would go on view immediately but that a large exhibition would not be mounted until the curatorial staff had had time to assess the material. Now that time has come and the museum has recently opened The Beauty of Life: William Morris and the Art of Design, a traveling exhibition of more than two hundred works that may be seen until April 4. The show will be on view at the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut, from October 14 to January 2, 2005.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The exhibition and its accompanying publication probe many aspects of Morris's achievements as a designer, printer, publisher, weaver, embroiderer, poet, calligrapher, dyer, translator, preservationist, ...